Goals for the Coming Year

Well, the holidays came and went and totally wiped me out.  Thankfully though, I was totally prepared (it was the kids that wiped me out!).  Following Household Management 101's Stress Free Holiday Series helped tremendously.  I was able to relax and get everything done at a reasonable pace.  No last minute rushing out to buy anything and I was able to avoid stores for the few days before Christmas.  Ah, simple.

Now if I can just keep up that level of preparedness through the next year.  A very good reason to follow Home Storage Solutions 101's 52 Weeks to an Organized Home.  The weekly challenges are great and you can hop in at any time.

I want very much to continue our family's simplicity challenge well into the next year.  We're doing ok and we've made some changes, but there's much more room for improvement.  I really want this to change our lives.  I want there to be a constant state of simplicity in our home.  Not an ebb and flow like it seems to be lately.  So now's the time to set goals for the coming year.  I'm sure I'll adjust these as needed, but here's what I'm leaning towards as the end of 2011 approaches:

• Sleep schedules will be a high priority.  Bedtime rules are going to be more fully enforced, for both kids AND adults.  There will be no staying awake until the wee hours and we will eliminate the rush to get ready in the morning.  We did ok with this for a little while, but it's probably the most difficult thing for us as a family.  It needs to be adjusted.  Getting enough sleep and starting our day off right sets the tone for the entire day, and quite possibly the entire week.
• We will continue our household purge.  If we want to bring something new into the house, that probably means it's time for something else to be donated or thrown away.
• Exercise will be important to us.  We all know that we feel better when we've been working out consistently.  It will be scheduled into weekly activities just like an appointment would be.
• We will eliminate areas of stress as much as possible.  This one is tricky - yes, parenting is stressful, work is stressful, but those are things that can't be eliminated.  But everyone has something in their life that doesn't need to be there and can be eliminated.  Think about it.  What stresses you out and can easily be changed?  For me, it's our pets.  I love animals and so do the kids, but they have become a huge source of stress for me.  Right now, the plan is to give away our guinea pigs and help our indoor cats become indoor/outdoor cats.  Our cats have made it quite clear that they are no longer happy with being kept indoors and I refuse to live in the filth that they are creating because of it.  I love our cats, but I will love them even more if I'm not constantly smelling cat urine in a closet or bathroom, or finding cat feces hidden in various places in my laundry room.

As it stands, I'm going back to school in a few weeks.  Keeping our lives simple yet fulfilling is going to be very important as I adjust to having homework and needing study time.  I'm excited for this next year, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't nervous.  I'm nervous about doing well, about the financial side of it, and about keeping our home life from falling into pieces.  My husband told me that he has noticed that I have such a big fear about failing that I either hide from things or massively over-do it.  Personally, I guess my New Year's Resolution is to take life one step at a time and build personal confidence while doing it.

2012 is going to be a big year for us.  I can feel it.  As a family, I know we can get to where we want to be lifestyle-wise if we just keep working at it.  I invite you to join us.  If you've been craving simplicity in your own life, now is the time.  No need to jump in and drastically change your lifestyle.  Just take some time to really assess your life and what you want from it.  Now how do you think you can get there?  What little changes can you make that will make your life easier?  Don't worry about the big changes yet.  Just take it one step at a time and let the change happen naturally.  If something isn't working, try something else.  There's always a way to make your life better.  Let's have 2012 be a happy and fulfilling year, shall we?

Frugality

Part of our journey to simplicity includes our finances.  We're approaching this by learning how to be frugal.  Not really because we NEED to in order to feed our family, but because it's the smart thing to do (hey congress, you might want to take note here).  We do have debt that includes a mortgage, student loans, and credit cards - just like most people.  We want to pay those off and we want to be able to be prepared financially for any emergencies that arise, like a layoff.  We went through that before and having me work full time retail was not fun (although I am grateful that my employer at that time had enough hours available to bump me from very part time to full time right away).  Being frugal is a way to make our financial life simple: No stressing about emergencies, knowing exactly what we can afford, and having funds for our future (retirement, vacations, etc).  We're certainly still learning the ins and outs of frugality and we are learning from our mistakes.  WiseBread has a great article on frugality today and I'd like to share it with you:

WiseBread: A Beginners Guide to Frugal Living

Christmas Simplicity

Sorry for the lack of posts.  I've been fighting a horrible cold since we returned from our trip and it's zapped most of my energy and motivation.  I'm ready to be able to fully breathe again and not have my asthmatic lungs hurt.

Over the past week, I've been thinking about how I've made this holiday season simple for us.  I'm sure it's not as simple as it could be (hey, I'm still pretty new to this), but I am pleased with the changes we've made.  It wasn't very difficult and I definitely had help in the form of Household Management 101's Stress Free Holiday Series.  Seriously LOVE IT.

Normally, we'd cram all decorating into one day and by the end of the day, everyone would be crabby and tired of decorating.  This year, we spread it out over one week.  I gradually got out the interior decorations (there aren't many because we have little kids who like to touch things), then we put up the outdoor decorations, and then finally got our tree and decorated that.  The only complicated thing ended up being the size of the tree.  I went BIG this year - although honestly, we could have gone a full foot taller - and while that wouldn't have been a problem, we now have a treadmill in our living room right where the tree went last year. So we had to rearrange the living room.  On the bright side, we think we like the new quirky layout a lot better.  Once the tree is gone after Christmas, we're going to try it out without a tree in the way and see what we think.

Now, what about Christmas shopping?  This has to be THE most stressful thing about the holidays.  And usually, I'd wait until December 1 to start.  This year, I started around Halloween and am done as of yesterday, when the last present arrived in the mail.  I did most of my shopping online because quite honestly, I hate stores at Christmas.  I now get to sit back and enjoy the season.  How beautifully simple!

I am now trying to continue getting stuff out of my house, since we'll be bringing more in once presents are opened.  This has turned into me rearranging various rooms to make things flow as naturally as possible.  I'm beginning to think this will always be a work in progress.  Every time I reach an organized point, I find a way that I can improve upon it.  Which is great, but might annoy my family slightly because their things have suddenly been moved.  Again.

So far, I'm pleased with how our Christmas flow has changed.  I am happy to be able to relax and I've been able to be much more crafty this year because I actually have the time.  We've made some fun new decorations, and we're doing some homemade gifts for a Secret Santa exchange.  I'm super excited to see how they turn out.  The big challenge will come right after Christmas when we have loads of new toys to find places for - but that just means we'll get rid of more things to make room.

Simplicity at it's Best!

Awesome and I mean *AWESOME* article on Yahoo! today.  This is definitely one to print out and have readily available.

Clean Your House In Less Than An Hour

Trip Planning

Starting my simplicity challenge, the thought of preparing and planning for trips never entered my mind.  But why not?  Everyone wants their trips to be simple and stress free.  I know I do!  This is going to be interesting...

I wonder if when you have everything household-wise simplified and organized, preparing for trips naturally becomes easier.  Or maybe it's just the kind of thing that will always be stressful, especially when you have small children.  I'm not stress free right now.  Things are not as simple as I want them to be.  I am avoiding tackling today's list (obviously, or else I wouldn't be blogging right now) because I get overwhelmed thinking about this entire week.  I expect to be absolutely looney with stress by Friday.  But I don't want to be.  So here's the goal for this week:  

Focus on the tasks that HAVE to be done and don't worry about the extras.

I want to come home to a perfectly clean house, but does it really matter if the downstairs bookshelf has a few DVDs out of place?  No, so I need to not worry about that.  I will take a look at my to-do list for the week and see if there's anything from Friday (a very busy day) that I can move to Wednesday or Thursday, just to ease up on last minute tasks.

So I need to knock this expectation of being stressed out right out of my head and decide that I WANT to be calm and prepared this week.  My children deserve a mom who isn't raising her voice every five minutes, my husband deserves a wife who welcomes his hugs instead brushing them off because there's still something that needs to be done, and I deserve to start my trip with a clear mind.  I wanted a challenge and now I've really got one!

Home Storage Solutions 101

I'm really throwing myself into this simplicity thing right now.  Maybe it's because I felt like I was lagging a bit during October, or maybe I just really want to get through the holidays and start a new year feeling like life is fantastic.  So, I'm now doing this along with everything else:

It's week two (or week 45, since she's looping the weeks through next year as well) and I feel awesome about my progress.  Seriously, I've spent maybe three hours total and my boys' bedroom is so much more organized.  I didn't even buy any new storage containers (although I plan to buy a new laundry hamper for their closet and a set of three Rubbermaid (or similar) drawers for my six year old's Legos).

Every little bit of new cleaning, organizing, or planning routine that I'm taking part in is saving me countless hours each week.  Yes, it's scheduled cleaning, etc, but I'm not having to spend a full day working on something like I was before.  I can spend an hour or two in the morning or late afternoon while the boys are otherwise engaged, make a big difference in our household, and then go about the rest of my business.  I'm getting in so much more playtime with my kids since I've started all this.  And to me, that makes it all worth it.

Prepared!

Can I just say how happy I am that I decided to follow the Stress Free Holiday Series from Household Management 101?  I feel so on top of things, it's ridiculous.

My Halloween decorations were put away within two days of Halloween passing.  I'm the only one in my entire neighborhood who has taken decorations down.  The decorations went straight into a new storage container that was promptly labeled and put on a shelf in the garage, where it is sitting pretty for next Halloween.

Even though I don't host for Thanksgiving, I always contribute a few dishes.  Those are now planned, so I can be ready to whip them up and take them to my in-laws for the meal.  Planning this out was especially important since we'll be out of town right before Thanksgiving and I didn't want any last minute scrambling for what I needed to bring to dinner.

I can't really believe I'm talking about Christmas yet, but I know November will fly right by me.  Half of the Christmas presents are already purchased (although I am still waiting on most of them to actually arrive).  This is huge.  I don't know when I last shopped for presents before Thanksgiving.

And, to make it official, I just ordered our Christmas cards.  They'll arrive before Thanksgiving and be ready to go in the mail on December 1st.

Starting this challenge has been the best thing I've done for our family (and my mental health) in a really long time!

The Garage

Last night my husband mentioned that he really needs to start parking in the garage.  It's getting colder and we've had to scrape the windshield the past few mornings.  It takes between 10 and 15 minutes to get the car warm enough for all the windows to be clear.  And he feels that all this cuts into his work day.  (Of course, if he would wake up on time like a nearly 30 year old man should, this might not be such a big issue....)  But I agreed with him.  He does need to be able to park in the garage so the frost and ice isn't a problem for getting going in the morning.

But this meant something would have to happen that I'd been avoiding: We must clean the garage.  <insert horror movie scream here>

Since the rain had yet to start this afternoon, I took the kids outside and had them ride bikes around the driveway while I attempted to work on the garage.  I think I mostly just shuffled stuff around.  It's the thought that counts, right?

Obviously, in terms of organizing and simplifying, the garage is the biggest problem area.  It's better than it was at the beginning of the summer in terms of how much stuff is in there, but due to going through boxes and moving stuff around, it LOOKS worse.  And all the sawdust that covers every inch of the garage from when my husband made bunk beds for the boys isn't helping.

I did purchase a bunch of storage bins so I could move holiday decorations from various cardboard boxes.  I'm all for keeping the spiders out as much as possible, plus if I ever flood the garage again through our central air system (long story), our items will be better protected in the plastic containers than they would be in cardboard.  I didn't know how much would really fit into them, but I was able to fit all Halloween decorations into one medium sized bin and all Christmas decorations into one large bin.  All in all, I did away with five big cardboard boxes (clearing two whole shelves) just from using those two bins.  Unbelievable!  I was so excited and, I'll admit it, just a tad proud of myself for saving so much garage space.  I foresee my storage bin/system addiction getting worse....

There's still a TON to do, but after clearing away five boxes and finally taking some pictures of larger items that we've been wanting to sell, I felt like I made some progress today.  And the more progress I make in the garage, the more room it gives me to toss out more stuff from the house.  Hmm?  The car?  Better stock up on ice scrapers, honey.

Grocery Challenge Month #2

What a strange month.  With everything that was going on (mentioned in my previous post), it was quite difficult to stick to anything.  Having just gone over all the receipts from October and looking at our financial records, I have to admit that I'm confused.  Here's why:

We went over budget again; in fact, we went over $52 more than we did in September.  We spent more on food, but less on household items.  Food cost $450 in October!  Apparently my desired food budget of $300 does not include candy heavy months (thanks, Halloween) or stress-induced cravings.  Blah.  And yes, I can almost guarantee you that that additional $150 was spent on candy and snacks that we probably didn't need.  However, even though we've been over budget for the past two months, the amount of money we have left in the bank account at the end of each pay period is steadily increasing.  Um, what?

I haven't looked closely enough to see what might be making the difference, but I have some theories.

1) Even though we've been over our desired grocery/household budget for the past two months, we are still spending less (anywhere from $50-$200 less) each month than when we weren't actively trying to stick to a budget.  So that's awesome.

2) We're spending less in other areas.  We've essentially stopped eating fast food, except for once or twice in the past couple of months, so our dining out expenses have dropped big time.  It's good for the wallet AND for the waistline.  Plus, we're just not buying as much stuff as we used to.  Trying to limit our possessions has made us all think twice before purchasing anything: "Do we REALLY need this?".  Trips to Target (oh, what a  problem store for shopaholics!) have decreased immensely, with me not even setting foot in a Target for nearly two months until mid-October when my six year old needed new clothes.

3) I'm selling our crap.  I haven't looked at how much I've made since I started selling the stuff we don't need anymore, but I will bet you anything that it's over $600.  That money has been going right into the bank account (except for the past two weeks, when I built up some money to spend on ebay for Christmas presents).

All in all, it's been very interesting so far to see what happens when we make lifestyle changes.  I don't think we're doing anything super amazing or drastic or revolutionary, but I'm hoping that by making positive changes in our life, I can encourage others to do the same.

Challenge for Sure!

The past week or so has been a struggle.  My grandfather passed away, my husband has been working massively long hours, I'm not even close to being well rested, and all of this is sucking away energy and motivation.

The hardest part of simplifying everything so far has been the financial side of it.  It's hard to feel like we're making any difference whatsoever and finding nothing else that we're able (or willing) to cut out.  Some days I feel like we've hit a wall, but don't you worry - I'm going to keep plugging along.  I know deep down that there are always ways to improve and save and I just have to figure out what works for us.

Household wise, I continue to see a difference.  Basic straightening is taking less and less time and we've been able to welcome people into our home at little notice without it giving me a panic attack.  That itself is an amazing feeling.  Over at TidyMom, the Countdown to Clean Series was completed, and I printed out everything (twice).  One set is up on my fridge and the other set is by my desk upstairs.  It really has helped me decrease the feeling of being overwhelmed when I need to clean, plus when I do get a little behind in housework, the house only looks slightly cluttered instead of suddenly looking like a drug house.  I'd highly recommend her series to anyone.  Things are by no means perfect yet - I still have lots of purging left to do - but seeing a difference here is encouraging.

Speaking of purging, I do not even want to talk into my garage right now.  As I'm purging the house, stuff is getting put into the garage into various piles (keep, organize, sell, give away).  The garage needs help so badly (we never really organized it when we moved in over a year ago), but I don't really feel like I can attack it until I finish purging the house.  I'm hoping that I can at least get through some of the items to sell in order to set that money aside for Christmas gifts.  I don't expect to cover our entire Christmas budget by selling our unwanted items, but hopefully I can at least make a small dent.

So that's where I sit mentally.  I'm hoping to pop my energy and motivation up a couple notches this week.  Since I feel ready to attack a few more things, I think I can do it - provided I can stick to my bedtime this week and get the sleep that I desperately need.

Yet Another Good Reason to Simplify!

Is this another great reason to simplify or what?! 

Study shows that materialism kills marriages - Yahoo! News

I don't know about you, but I'd rather have my marriage than a house full of stuff.

Household Management Stress Free Holiday Series

Household Management 101 is having a 13 week series on how to have a stress free holiday season, covering from Halloween through New Years. I'm excited about this one and plan on challenging myself to this as I go about my simplicity plan. You should try it too! Everyone wants stress free holidays, right? I'll keep the series button up on my blog just below the links and websites so you don't have to go digging through posts to find it again.

Grocery Challenge Month #1

We completed our first month of our grocery challenge ($300 for food, $100 for household items).  We went over budget.  It's hard to say if it was due to not watching closely enough, or from needing to buy extra food due to the three parties we hosted (although we were over even without the parties).  Thankfully, we do not host three parties in a normal month (we rarely host any parties at all!), so here's hoping that October shows what a normal month of shopping looks like.  Here's how it all looked:

Grocery/Food: $369.07 (over budget by $69.07 - this does not include party food)
Household items (Pet, toilet paper, shampoo, etc): $142.94 (over budget by $42.94)
Total Cost: $512.01 (w/party: $612.42)
Total Over Budget: $112.01 (w/party, over budget by: $212.42)

Grumble.  Looks like we have some work to do on our shopping habits still.  Looking at these totals is painful and makes me ashamed.  I thought for sure we were doing better, but these totals make it look like a regular month of willy-nilly purchasing.  Hey, that's what this blog is for, right?  Putting my challenges, successes, AND failures out there.

So how to change it?  Let's look at some mistakes from last month.

1.  I didn't plan meals.  I think I was focusing too hard on getting crap out of my house and making sure the place was clean when I should have been also including meal planning and looking at finances.  I should have scheduled a time each week to create a meal plan for the following week.  I went to the grocery store every Wednesday.  Tuesday evening would have been a perfect time to write down any extras that I might need for the following week.  Meal plans have to be a priority.

2. I sent my husband to the store for extra shopping trips too many times.  My dear husband likes to worry about finances and tell me exactly how much money we have to spend on what.  But when it comes to going into a grocery store, he turns into an impulse buyer.  Granted, I was very sick for a few days and needed some items that we didn't have in the house (cold meds, ginger ale, soup, crackers), so it was kind of unavoidable.  I can't control him when he's at the store without me though, and sending him with a list doesn't help much.  I'm not sure how I can fix this other than limiting when he gets to shop alone to when it's absolutely needed (like my sick weekend).  I sent him to the store two extra times when I could have gone.

3.  I didn't keep a price diary.  I didn't see it as necessary because I thought I knew what I would and would not pay for things, but it can't hurt.  If I'm really serious about making this budget work, I need to be willing to employ some crazy shopper techniques (especially since I'm not willing to take 1000 coupons with me each time I go to the store).  Don't know what a price diary is?  Check this out: The Price Diary - How to Save More From Knowing When to Buy.  This also includes knowing what fruit and veggies are in season to avoid over paying for them.  You can get that list here: WiseBread: Fresh Fruits and Vegetables, By the Month.

4.  I just used my debit card and ignored the envelope system for the month.  It's hard to really think about how much you're spending when you just swipe a card.  It's hard to know/remember how much you have left in your budget when you're not physically looking at how much cash you have available.  For some reason, I figured since I was keeping track by keeping receipts, I might not need the envelope system.  Obviously, I was wrong.  I've bought some groceries already this month by using the debit card, so whatever is left in the budget is how much cash I will take out next time I'm at the ATM.  I must not ignore the envelopes!

I'll start with these changes and we'll see where that takes us.  It's not easy to admit failure, but I know that looking over where we went wrong will help us in the long run.  What an eye opener this first month has been!  Here's hoping I have better results to show for October.

What A Challenge!

A top news story on Yahoo today is about one couple who was able to retire by age 43 by leaving below their means.  Of course, they didn't have children, so it was probably a lot easier to do than it would be for those of us with families, but what an interesting challenge.  What amazes me is how quickly they did it: In about 15 years after making the decision to go for it.  I don't know....could you make those kind of sacrifices in order to leave the work force so early?  You can read their story here: 5 Tips from Early Retirees.

Budget Birthday

My oldest is turning six next Monday (WHAT?!  How did that happen??), so it's time for a birthday party and all the expense that goes along with it!  Actually, it's time for two birthday parties.  No, I wasn't trying to spend as much as possible.  It was actually my way to reduce birthday stress.  On Saturday we're having the "friends" party at a local park (the weather guy keeps flip-flopping between sun and rain - doesn't he know I have an event to worry about?), then on Sunday we're having the extended family over for a party.  I tried to have both friends and family over at the same time last year and it was just too insane.  My house is in no way big enough for that.  So I thought it would simplify things to have them separately.  Because it's ALL about simplicity......right?

Yes, simple.  Except I had to figure out how to pull off two parties with food, decor, and his presents without spending a ton.  A "save money" type blog I found bragged about how she only spent $300 on her kid's party and that was the cheapest she'd ever gone.  I have to be able to do better than that!  Here's how I did:

My children are very big on their birthday themes, so there was no negotiating there, but I can take the main colors from his theme and buy colored coordinated decor and only a few character items.  I also keep any leftover party items in a box in the pantry and it turned out that we still had enough plates and napkins with our needed colors.  Score!  I am doing goody bags for the kids coming to the "friend" party, but only the goody bag itself has the character theme on it.  I'm filling it with bulk candy and little dollar store random items (bubbles, dinosaurs, stretchy frogs, etc).  Breakdown:

Goody bags: $18.48 

(that's roughly $2.05 per kid)

Decor: $18.37

As far as presents go, we're trying to limit our belongings and he's going to be getting a bunch from other people anyway so I stuck to two gifts: one was bought from eBay at a very discounted price and the other was bought from a store that's going out of business so everything was on sale.  Breakdown:

Star Wars DVD set from ebay: $23.00

Star Wars Book: $12.00  

And then there's food.  Probably the biggest expense of all.  I tried to look up different blogs on cheap foods to have at parties and honestly wasn't finding anything besides "Just give them chips and ice cream".  Um, no.  While that would cost very little, it also makes me look really stingy and/or unprepared.  These people are nice enough to come to a party and bring my child a present, so the least I can do is give them some decent snacks.  So I spent an hour on a "menu" and narrowed it down to reasonably easy, cost effective, and healthy snacks.  I'm also doing the exact same thing for both parties, so I'm just doubling everything.  Any leftovers from the party on Saturday can also be used on Sunday.  One big cost saver: I'm not ordering a cake.  I actually haven't ordered a cake since my oldest's 1st birthday.  I prefer the taste of homemade cakes and there's always too much frosting on the store bought ones.  Yes, he wants a Star Wars cake, but we're going to for coordinating colors and then I'm going to use a few figurines from his Lego Star Wars sets as cake toppers.  It'll be funny and memorable on top of saving me money.  Here's the menu and the cost breakdown:

Menu

Homemade Cupcakes (park)/Cake (home)

Cantaloupe melon balls

Cucumbers, carrots, celery with hummus, ranch dressing, and spinach dip

Crackers

Homemade rice krispy treats

Homemade pumpkin bread

Food Cost

$63.56

Grand total for two parties:  $135.41

I don't know if I could have done any better.  Maybe I could have found an even cheaper way to do goody bags, although I feel like $2 per kid is pretty darn good.  Even so, I still found my heart sinking a little when everything was rung up at the store.  Maybe just because I know we're over our food budget for the month anyway or maybe I was unrealistically expecting to pull off a kid's double party under $100.  I guess that begs the question: Is a $100 kid party (with presents) even possible?

The First Bump in the Road

So I haven't posted in a week here and that's because a massive cold/flu/viral butt-kicking hit our household.  Well, I should clarify that.  It hit me.  The kids didn't get it as bad and either the hubby is breezing by it or it's just waiting to attack him.  But me?  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  And there came the first roadblock in our simplicity plan.

Our schedule got totally thrown off.  My oldest missed one day of school, my husband had to take him and pick him up the other two days (and ran late enough he had to drive him instead of walk the four blocks), the youngest started having potty accidents again, as did the dog.

Meals went out the window.  While we had food on hand, because of illness, only certain things could really be eaten without coming back up.  Which meant two days of grocery store runs for my hubby and he's not the greatest with sticking to a list (although he did get lots of fruits and veggies for a reasonable price).  This means we're way above our grocery budget for the month.

Housework was non-existent.  Anytime I think that I'm not doing enough around here, I should slap myself in the face.  While my house isn't perfect, it's reasonably clean most of the time - meaning that I actually do plenty around here.  But no amount of cleaning and organizing that I've done so far could handle my husband and children having full reign of the house for a few days.  Don't get me wrong though.  My husband really did step up to the plate while I was down and I appreciate it.  He cooked, did dishes, took care of the kids, even started a load of laundry and most importantly, took care of me.

I'm going to add in here that I took a two hour break from writing this to deal with a partial downed tree in my front yard that was blocking the road.  Life really likes to throw interesting things my way.

Anyway, I'm hoping we can get back on track quickly.  We have a birthday party to host this coming weekend and I don't want to go back to my former hosting self of rushing around at the last minute.

The Changes So Far

When I first got the simplicity idea about a month ago, I expected it would take at least a few months to see any sort of difference in our daily life.  But here we are, one month into the idea (and that doesn't mean that everything I've tried so far has been happening for a full month) and I can tell a difference.

I've cleared out a good portion of belongings that we didn't need anymore and that includes some random furniture, freeing up a little bit of floor space.  I've organized a few areas and have been putting things away when we're done with them and if I'm heading upstairs/downstairs, I grab whatever I see that should go with me.  Just these few changes have massively cut down on the amount of time it takes me to clean my house.  I've set up a housework schedule and yes, I actually schedule the housework like an appointment.  I bought a day planner and I write down my housework to be done at a certain time.  Example from the other day:

9:30am-10am: Basic tidying
10am-11am: Clean bathrooms (hey, I have three bathrooms that need to be scrubbed down and it very well might take me a whole hour some days)
1pm: Clean cat box and guinea pig cage

Usually, I won't schedule more than three household tasks (cooking doesn't count) each day.  That way, I'm not overwhelmed with stuff to do and it gives me time to play with my kids.

I've been spending more time with my boys than I ever imagined.  We've been playing games, going to the park more often, and having little baking sessions together.  It's been great and their behavior has drastically improved.  We've also cut down on our TV time because we're spending time with each other instead.

I noticed a huge unexpected difference this weekend as well.  We were having a group from church over for dinner on Saturday evening and normally when we have people over, I'm stressed beyond belief.  Spending an entire week before the get-together making sure my house is JUST how I want it, and when the day comes around, I still end up coming to the door out of breath and covered in sweat because I've been cleaning like a mad person.  That didn't happen this weekend.  At all.  There was no stress.  My house was clean already.  I spent an hour or so on Friday sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, and dusting, but that was it.  I was fresh faced, relaxed, and happy when everyone arrived on Saturday.  When I realized the difference from our past parties/get-togethers, I nearly cried.  What a wonderful, wonderful change it was to actually enjoy having people over instead of worrying about how my home looked.

One month in and we are happier already.  I can't wait to see how things continue to change as we get further along in our challenge!

Two Must-Haves

Two of my must-have items for making life simple are things I've had for a few years now.  A slow cooker and a bread machine.  I use them, but I don't use them nearly enough and that's also going to be part of my challenge.  These two items allow me to minimize how much dinner prep I have to do with two little boys running around.

My typical routine (that I've always hated) is to spend at least an hour working on dinner right before mealtime (because that's when you're supposed to work on dinner, right?).  This seems to be the most hectic time of day for us.  My kids are overly hyper and begin to fight constantly, which riles up the dog, and someone almost always ends up getting hurt from either falling over, getting smacked by a sibling, or nipped by the dog because they stepped on his tail during all their running around.  And of course my husband isn't home yet and I can't really stop what I'm doing, so I'm standing there yelling my head off for them to stop it and calm down.  Chaos.  Pure chaos.

My house won't be like that today.  Today I'm utilizing the slow cooker and bread machine.  I'm using the small amount of quiet time the boys have after school (we only have half day kindergarten here) to do my dinner prep.  While they have their snack and watch their PBS show, I am loading up the slow cooker with stuff for spaghetti meat sauce and the bread machine with ingredients for french bread.  I'll have to do a little more prep on the bread in an hour or so, but then will only have to spend about 15 minutes getting the pasta cooked right before dinner.  We will have a filling, delicious meal and I won't feel like a rundown crazy person afterwards.  And I'll be able to spend more time playing with the boys this afternoon.  A bonus!

These items are perfect for easing mealtime frustration.  Even if you don't like bread machine bread (I'm not a fan of it - I just don't think it's as good as oven-fresh bread), a bread machine is still great for cutting down on time spent in the kitchen.  I've never actually baked bread in my bread machine - I only use it for mixing and letting the bread rise (it's a warm place and works really well).  I simply pour the ingredients in, turn it on, and it does all the mixing and kneading for me.  No mess, very little time.

I'm glad that in this case of simplicity, all I had to do was use what was right in front of me.  How many evenings of frustration and stress could I have avoided if I'd just figured that out in the first place?

Reading Material for a Simple Life

A challenge like this is difficult.  It makes a lot of people want to stop before they even get started....mainly because they just don't know where to start.  I had to fight the feelings of being overwhelmed with how to begin, and I still have to fight them every few days.  Feeling like I'm not progressing or that maybe it all really is just too hard.  I knew I'd need direction, so I picked up some reading materials to help me through.

Book 1: Frugal Living for Dummies: Practical ideas to help you spend less, save more, and live well. By Deborah Taylor-Hough
I love the Dummies books.  They break everything down in an extremely helpful way, so when you're trying out a challenge like this, you can really focus on exactly what you're wanting to do without having to shift through what you don't want.

Book 2: Organizing Magic: 40 days to a well-ordered home and life.  By Sandra Felton
I've just flipped through this one so far, but it really is written out by day and what the organizational goal is for that day.  It's not overwhelming, it's super simple, and so incredibly easy that no one should have any excuse as to why they shouldn't be following along with this book (unless your house is already perfectly organized).

Book 3: Simplify Your Life with Kids: 100 Ways to Make Family Life Easier and More Fun.  By Elaine St. James
I've already recommended this book to a few people because it really is amazing.  The 100 ways are broken down into organized quick tips for common family problem areas.  It's quick to flip through and I've already implemented a few suggestions from the book.  Just a couple minor changes and I already feel more put together during the day.  I never expected such small changes to make a difference.

You'll note that in a money-saving fashion, I borrowed all of these from the library instead of running out and buying them. I see no point in plunking down money for a book if I'm not even sure it's going to work for us.  Once I read these fully and try the suggestions out, I'll know if it's something I want to keep on hand in case we get derailed somehow in our quest for simplicity.  Although I can already tell you that I plan to buy the Dummies book.  With the absolute wealth of information in there, it's a perfect reference to have on hand at all times.

These books are just my starter books.  I'm sure I'll have many more to share with you as we get further along.  But until then, I fully recommend heading to the library and checking these books out.  You never know where the suggestions might take you!

The Grocery Side of the Challenge

Like I mentioned previously, I'm attempting to keep our food budget for our family of four to $300 per month (essentially forcing me to stick to meal plans, shopping lists, and using everything in my fridge/pantry) and our household basics (toilet paper, detergent, shampoo, pet food, etc) to $100 per month.  Luckily I decided to start this at the beginning of a month so I can easily keep track of how I'm starting out.  I waited to go shopping until we were literally down to rice and carrots.  This means two large shopping trips (Fred Meyer and Costco) needed to happen, but they should be the biggest of the month and hopefully a few things will carry us quite far.  Here's how it's adding up as of today, 9/8:

Food: $216.43
Household: $57.33

That means I have remaining for the rest of month:

Food: $83.57
Household: $42.67

The remaining household budget shouldn't be a problem.  The only other things we might need to get this month would be shampoo, nighttime pull-ups for my three year old, and cat food/litter.  In fact, I anticipate that we won't reach the $100 limit most months because I try to buy all my household basics at Costco and they tend to last me 2-3 months.

The remaining grocery budget could prove to be challenging.  We were seriously out of everything though, so I had to restock the entire kitchen.  I don't anticipate having to restock quite so much each month because I get my baking ingredients at Costco as well, so that will last a little while as well.  This is really going to depend on what I can do meal planning wise and how much batch cooking I can manage.  It's going to be interesting for sure.  I won't decide to make any changes to the food budget for a couple of months though.  I want to get a decent picture of what we REALLY need before I decide that $300 isn't working.

I'll definitely keep you updated on how it's going.

So Far

We've slowly been tackling closets and the garage to purge our belongings.  Here's the update on how much stuff we had, but don't need:

Five overflowing boxes have been dropped off at Goodwill.  These boxes included toys, clothes, dishes, knick knacks, and books.  These were things that we didn't feel we could get much cash for if we tried selling them or had already tried selling and they didn't go.

Sitting in the garage to be sold:
One toddler ride-along truck
One high chair
One infant swing
One infant bouncer (which actually will be given to the church nursery)
One diaper pail
One infant play mat
One crib set with bumper and comforter
And count 'em, EIGHT boxes of clothes, toys, books, and various odds and ends.  Every box is overflowing.

There are still some areas to be gone through, so we're not done yet.  Getting rid of this stuff feels so good.

Financially Fit

Yahoo! Finance has been doing a Financially Fit series and I've really been enjoying the articles.  Some of them don't really apply to me (like how much I might spend on upkeep if I installed a pool), but this one was worth sharing.

Financially Fit: Stretch Your Paycheck

Even if cutting your household costs aren't a huge concern for you, these still provide great ways to simplify and easily trim a few things here and there without sacrificing much.  Besides, couldn't we all use a little extra savings?

Why Simple Needs to Happen

You might be wondering why I up and decided that we were going to change our lifestyle.  That maybe it seems a little sudden.  But it's really not as sudden as it may appear to everyone not living in our house.

You see, I've been frustrated for a while and my family knows it.  Frustrated with the lack of motivation to get anything done, frustrated with the messes that were constantly made, frustrated with the piles of boxes in our closets and garage, frustrated with being late to everything and not getting everything done that needed to be done because we couldn't adhere to any sort of schedule.  I'd had it.  I was tired of resenting my family for the chaos and tired of feeling like I wasn't doing a good job as a wife and mother.  The kicker came when I realized I was forgetting basic things like feeding my children.  I completely forgot to give them any lunch for a few days in a row (luckily they tend to get snacks for themselves if they're hungry).  I was forgetting to bathe them.  They went over a week without having a bath and I hadn't realized it.  I started to forget to bathe myself.  One day I realized I hadn't showered in three days and hadn't washed my hair in over a week.  How on earth had I gotten to this point?  It's appalling, embarrassing, and fairly disgusting.

Somehow our life had gotten so complicated, rushed, and chaotic that our quality of life was headed down the toilet.  We couldn't continue that way and it needed to turn around fast.  I searched for recommendations on books, looked at blogs, and started gathering basic ideas as to how to begin our transformation from crazy to calm.  Because my brain has turned to mush, everything will be scheduled.  Our lives for the next few months will be written out hour by hour in a planner.  Eventually I know things will become second nature and I'll be able to scrap the hourly planner and go back to a daily one, but for now we need the strict schedule.

I'm not expecting this transformation to be easy.  I feel tired and overwhelmed and don't expect to feel the real results for a while yet, but I am so excited to see how we can become better people because of this.  And maybe we can be an example to others along the way.

The Beginning

Well, here I am.  Jumping into a trying a new way of life and dragging my family along with me.  Go ahead and call me crazy - but wouldn't you agree that if something doesn't feel like it's working, that it's time to try something else?  That's all I'm doing.  Trying something new.  It might work and it might not, but either way, I know I'll learn something along the way.  Maybe all I'll take away from this is a few new organization tips or a couple time saving dinner prep techniques.  But even then, I'll consider this whole thing worth it.  Nothing exciting happens from sitting on my rear and assuming that things won't get any better.

Admittedly the biggest part of this challenge is going to be sticking with it, so I'm setting up a time frame.  Nothing as big as a full year and nothing so wimpy as a measly 30 days - I am committing to doing this until the clock indicates the very first second of 2012.  That should give me just enough time to see if what I'm doing is making any difference.  Sure, it might not be a huge difference by then, but it will be long enough to figure out if we're all just miserable.

I invite you to commit to the simplicity challenge with me - as little or as much as you feel comfortable with.  Here are my three beginning goals so you can follow along:

1) Begin our new sleep schedule.  Our five year old begins morning kindergarten in one week and we HAVE to be there at the same time every weekday.  Kids in bed at 8pm, lights off by 9pm.  Adults in bed by 10:30pm, lights off by 11pm.  Adults awake at 6am, kids awake at 6:30am.  We are not morning people, so this is a huge deal and probably the biggest lifestyle change I think we'll end up making.  I don't expect this schedule to change at all.

2) Create and stick with daily, weekly, and monthly housework plans.  This one will probably take some tweaking as I figure out what works, what doesn't, and how often things should realistically be done.  As OCD as I feel sometimes, I will realize that we have small children and a perfect house is not going to happen.  Our home will be lived in, but not filthy.

3) Create weekly meal plans and complete a few batch meals to keep in the freezer each month.  My goal is to attempt a monthly grocery budget (not including household items like detergent, shampoo, toilet paper, etc) of $300 for our family of four.  That might not be realistic, but I'm going to try my very best.

As we ease into these top three goals, more will be added, like purging closets, limiting our belongings, and figuring out new organization systems to make housework faster and easier.  You get the idea.

So you are welcome along this journey with us or just feel free to sit back and laugh/cry/shake your head as we try to figure this out.  I'm sure it will provide at least a little entertainment.